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Recommendations based on To the Lighthouseby Virginia Woolf
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Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)
The Waves
by Virginia Woolf
Inner musings of six characters in search of individual identity, expressed through the ebb and flow of the sea.
The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard ... (Wikipedia)
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf
A fantastical journey through history and gender, exploring the complexities of identity.
The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I . He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into ... (Wikipedia)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.
Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)
Ulysses
by James Joyce
Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.
It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.
Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Collection of stories about everyday life in Dublin, exploring the Irish psyche.
This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic realities. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the ... (Goodreads)
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
A haunting story of loss and resilience in the aftermath of slavery.
Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio , where the protagonist Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver at 124 Bluestone Road. The book ... (Wikipedia)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
A woman's journey of self-discovery, liberation and empowerment.
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three ... (Goodreads)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.
The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)
Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
Two men wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, reflecting on their lives and existence.
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, have met near a leafless tree. Estragon spent the previous night lying in a ditch and receiving a beating from some unnamed assailants. The two men discuss a variety ... (Wikipedia)
Paradise Lost
by John Milton
Epic poem of the Fall of Man, exploring the depths of human nature and the consequences of sin.
John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of ... (Goodreads)
Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
A darkly comic and philosophical exploration of art, sanity, and the nature of reality.
Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and ... (Wikipedia)
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
A tangled web of family secrets, betrayal, and tragedy in the American South.
Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen , a white man born into poverty in West Virginia who moves to Mississippi with the complementary aims of gaining wealth and becoming a ... (Wikipedia)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
The Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, standing up to society's expectations.
Isabel Archer, from Albany, New York , is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's rich husband, Daniel, at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. ... (Wikipedia)
Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust
Autobiographical novel tracing the narrator's reminiscences of an aristocratic upbringing.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar ... (Goodreads)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Franny and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger
A brother and sister's journey towards finding spiritual understanding and inner peace.
The short story concerns Franny's weekend date with her collegiate boyfriend, Lane Coutell. Lane takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where Franny quickly becomes exasperated when he only appears ... (Wikipedia)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
An exploration of the nature of storytelling, as two readers attempt to uncover the lost story of the novel's title.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to ... (Goodreads)
